In the Ownership Society: Clarifying What It Is We Will Own

NPR had an interesting interview this morning with David Wessel, deputy Washington bureau chief of The Wall Street Journal, on what Bush is talking about when he talks of an "ownership" society. Wessel was a lot more candid, I think, than Bush is. I don't have an actual transcript, but the following comes pretty close:

Wessel: What [Bush] is talking about here goes far beyond [Social Security privitization] to changing the direction of American social policy away from a kind of government-will-take-care-of-you approach that was popular during FDR's New Deal and LBJ's Great Society into one where people take more responsibility on their own.

After some discussion of similar ownership approaches to medical care (e.g. medical savings accounts) , the interviewer, Rene Montagne, asked:

Montagne: Which is still a version of "owning the responsibility?"

Wessel: Right. There is upside and downside risk here. If you make all of the decisions yourself . . . and things go well, you do well. The President likes to talk about that. He doesn't talk quite so much about the downside risk. If things go sour, you have the responsibility as well.

Montagne: Where does the notion "ownership society comes from?

Wessel: I think it comes from a very deeply held conservatism that the President has, of faith in markets and the ability of individuals to navigate them, distrust of big government, and a sense that if government did less for us, we would do more for ourselves. We'd have more incentive to take risks and prosper, and we'd be in a better society.

I think Montagne's question -- actually more of a statement -- gets to the real essence of the issue: In the end, what Bush is proposing is ownership of responsibility. How do I feel about that?

I want to think (and probably write) more about the issue before answering. For now, though, let me acknowledge considerable ambivalence.

There was a time, barely two years ago, when I subscribed to this view whole-heartedly. Freedom, I told myself, implies the freedom to fail as well as the freedom to succeed, and relying on the government to protect you from failure inevitably gives the government control over your life -- the very antithesis of what I think of as freedom. But recently, I have become less sure of this. Partly, my conversion was motivated by my antipathy for other aspects of Bush's domestic and foreign policies (see this earlier post for more on that). Having so thoroughly parted ways with Bush on these issues, it has become very difficult to agree with him on anything. But partly, I am no longer certain where I think the balance should be struck between individual freedom/responsibility on the one hand and compassion for the less fortunate (and even the less responsible)on the other.

Though that issue is much broader than Social Security, my uncertainty on this has been crystallized by the need to decide what I think about Bush's privitization proposals. My still-strong Libertarian streak is all in favor of this. In fact, one part of me thinks Bush proposals are too modest: we should move entirely away from a "Rob-Peter-to-Pay-Paul" defined benefits plan to a program where each person is allowed/required to save for his/her own retirement and is allowed/required to assume the responsibility (and risk) associated with that. On the other hand, the emerging liberal in me (as well as a lot of reading and discussions on the issue) force me to acknowledge that most people won't actually do this, and that many of those who do will do so badly. If that prediction is correct, the reality is that privitization will leave many people destitute -- and that it will do so in direct proportion to the extent of the privitization. Saying that "this is their own fault" may be true, but it is beside the point. I just do not think that society can or would abandon such people to destitution, even where their situation is due to their own irresponsibility, much less where it is due to factors beyond their control. Thus, if people fail -- as many of them would (for whatever reason) -- to save and invest wisely, society will inevitably be forced to step back in to support them. So, maybe it would be better to avoid the experiment in the first place. On the third hand, this view of the American people is so profoundly patronizing that I find it very, very hard to swallow. I am, in short, utterly schizoid on this whole "ownership" issue.

Those (few) of you who are actually reading these pages but have resisted (or have not had) the urge to comment, please change your ways. I would really be interested in hearing what you think about this issue.